MARIA AND BRONYA MADE A PACT: the younger sister, still not 17, would work
as a private tutor, setting aside money to pay Bronya's tuition at medical school
in Paris and her living expenses there. As soon as Bronya could, she would help
subsidize Maria's education.

After two years of teaching various subjects to children from wealthy families,
Maria realized she was not saving money efficiently enough. For the next three
years she worked as a well-paid governess.

Her charges were the children of an agriculturist who ran a beet-sugar factory
in a village 150 kilometers north of Warsaw. Maria felt a kinship with her employer
when he permitted her in her spare time to teach the illiterate children of
his peasant laborers. He encouraged his older daughter to assist Maria, even
though he knew the czarist authorities equated such activity with treason. "Even
this innocent work presented danger," Maria recalled, as all initiative of this
kind was forbidden by the government and might bring imprisonment or deportation
to Siberia.

When their governess fell in love with their oldest son, however, her employers
were none too pleased. As fond as they were of Maria, they did not welcome the
knowledge that their beloved Kazmierz, on vacation from his agricultural engineering
course in Warsaw, wanted to marry the penniless girl. Although the couple bowed
to his parents' wishes and broke off the engagement, their romantic involvement
continued for several years more. As difficult as it was to stay under the same
roof as a family that clearly did not welcome her as one of their own, Maria
remained in their employ because she took her pact with Bronya seriously.

"If [men] don't want to marry impecunious
young girls, let them go to the devil! Nobody is asking them anything. But why
do they offend by troubling the peace of an innocent creature?" --letter
of Marie Curie to her cousin Henrietta Michalowska, April 4, 1887

TO FILL HER LONELY HOURS she began a course of self-study. Unsure at first
where her academic interests lay, she read sociological studies and works of
literature along with physics and chemistry textbooks. By mail she also took
the equivalent of an advanced math course with her father. When it became clear
that math and the physical sciences were her forte, she took chemistry lessons
from a chemist in the beet-sugar factory.

After returning to Warsaw in 1889, Maria worked as a live-in governess for
another year before resuming life with her father and work as a private tutor.
During her absence Sklodowski had become director of a reform school, and the
new position paid well enough for him to send a monthly subsidy to Bronya in
Paris. By arrangement with Bronya, he began to set aside a portion of that subsidy
to compensate Maria for the sums she had been sending her sister. Eventually
it became clear that by fall 1891, Maria would have enough money to begin studies
at the University of Paris--the famous Sorbonne.

"During these years of isolated work, trying
little by little to find my real preferences, I finally turned towards mathematics
and physics, and resolutely undertook a serious preparation for future work."

MARIA STILL LACKED real laboratory experience, and she hoped to gain some before
her departure. This was no easy task, given the czarist ban on such work. The
ingenuity of her cousin Joseph Boguski helped her achieve her illicit goal.
A former assistant of Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev , Boguski ran the so-called
Museum of Industry and Agriculture, which was actually a laboratory aimed at
training Polish scientists. One of Boguski's colleagues there gave Maria an
intensive chemistry course on Sundays and evenings. More often than not, however,
she struggled through experiments on her own, often failing to duplicate the
expected results.

Finally, in autumn 1891, Maria Sklodowska set out for Paris. Traveling as economically
as possible, she carried not only enough food and reading for the trip but also
a folding chair and a blanket: fourth-class travelers through Germany were not
provided with seating. "So it was in November, 1891," she recalled, "at the
age of 24, that I was able to realize the dream that had been constantly in
my mind for several years."